Who Deserves Vacation More?

This debate between Thomas Geoghegan and Peter Baldwin on why European workers have so many weeks of vacation while Americans have so few drew hundreds of comments. Many readers in Europe and some expatriates who've returned to the United States sent in their observations about how workplace culture plays into this vacation gap. Here are excerpts from their comments.

Updated April 26, 2011, 1:16 PM

Less Schmoozing, More Work

Here I get to work, say good morning to the secretaries and open my email. I am -- literally -- at work within 60 seconds of entering the office.

Van Redin/20th Century Fox A scene from "Office Space."

If I did that in the U.S., I’d be considered antisocial. In the U.S., hanging out by the coffee machine and having a few minutes to talk while you drink your coffee is normal. So yeah, the workday is longer in the U.S., but it is also more relaxed. Longer, however does not mean more productive. About the same amount of productive work gets done in either case. I enjoy the easy camaraderie of the U.S. workplace. In northern Europe, at least, things are much more work focused at work and people disappear swiftly afterward.

— Mark, Copenhagen

Germans Don't Need to Meet

As an American manager who spent his career working in Europe, mostly in Germany as an employee, not an expatriate, I have nothing but praise for German management and employees.

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They are efficient, hard working, and serious about their jobs. Americans put in hours and they believe that is enough. Germans and other Europeans work less hours and produce more quality results. Efficiency is the key. My fellow Americans started the day with personal and friendly matters rather than the job. When confronted with a problem they have the tendency to “Meet It To Death.”

— Panicalep, Italy

What Do Crazy Hours Accomplish?

I am an American ex-pat working for a Western European financial services company (currently in Russia), and the only thing that counts here is results. Working abnormally long hours or skipping vacations won’t impress anybody. I’m always amazed by how incredibly productive my French and German (as well as Russian) colleagues are. They accomplish a lot during more or less normal working hours, rarely work on weekends, and take the entire month of August off, combined with an almost obligatory skiing vacation in February. I assure you that our results, operational and financial, are not worse, if not better, than those of our U.S. competitors despite our long vacations. I honestly don’t know what it is exactly that Americans accomplish by working those crazy hours.

— Michael, Moscow

The French Work Harder

I work a lot less hours since I moved to the U.S. from France, which may be against popular wisdom but very true. The legal workweek in France is officially 35 hours/week, and minimum vacation is 5 weeks/year (plus additional days to compensate for any extra hours over 35/week, depending on union agreements and company size), but my typical day as a management consultant was more around 14 hours/day. You rarely see people with corporate responsibilities leaving the office before 8 p.m. On the contrary, in New York, office space vacates visibly after 5 p.m., even earlier on Fridays.

— Melanie, New York City

It's Worse in Japan

In my career as an engineer and scientist, I have lived in Australia (14 yrs), Japan (2 yrs) and South Africa (5 yrs) and have had a minimum of 4 weeks paid holiday a year at all my jobs, except when I lived in the U.S. When I was in Japan, I managed to use up 3 weeks per year but the other workers were afraid to go for more than 2 weeks total due to peer pressure. You could see the result in the burnout of the other workers after a number of years in the same job. In Australia, and especially in South Africa (where it is legally mandated that two consecutive weeks of holiday must be taken), there is much less burnout.

— Charlie, South Africa

When Job Loss Isn't a Concern

I agree that Europeans are more efficient during their working hours than Americans. As an American who worked in Brussels for four years, I saw this first hand. But this alone is not enough to explain the vacation gap. Other factors such as labor laws and high tax rates play a large role. If you don't have to worry about losing your job or how to finance your retirement, and you have to pay 60 percent marginal tax for additional days worked, why wouldn't you take as much vacation as you can?

— null

Why the Dutch Are Efficient

I’ve been living and working in the Netherlands for 18 years, coming from South Africa -- where companies provide very similar labor contracts as in the U.S. What strikes me the most about the labor ethic in the Netherlands is the pragmatic approach of employers and employees. Essentially a job has got to be done, with the best possible tools and a minimum quality has got to be achieved.

I currently hold a senior position as an economist. On an average day, about 60 percent of my colleagues are at the office. Many work from home -- to cut traveling time, concentrate better and take care of the kids. Others work part-time. Even with so little physical presence we manage to communicate, solve problems and get the job done. Give employees the correct balance of freedom and free time and it will earn the employer extra on the long run.

— DJD, Amsterdam

A Better Life, With Less Pay

I’m an American medical doctor living and working in Australia — not exactly Europe but in some ways similar with respect to work/life balance. My wife and I, both infectious-diseases specialists, each put in about 30 hours a week not including some time on-call when we must be available to troubleshoot problems over the phone, and we each make roughly half of what we’d earn in private practice in the U.S. If we tried this in the States, we’d have to decline referrals, and it’s a good bet that pretty soon we’d get no referrals at all. Our practice partners would be demanding that we increase our productivity or scram. As much as I miss the action of the USA — both professionally and socially things somehow seem more active in the U.S. — the life here is just too good to give up. I work enough to keep my clinical skills honed, but I pick my kids up from school several times a week, and every so often I get out for a surf at ten o’clock on a Tuesday morning and say to myself, “How good is this!”

— Aaron Walton, Geelong, Australia

The Citizens' Right

As an American living in France for some time now, I see the difference in vacation habits between Americans and the French. Vacation periods during the summer are almost regimented, with mass departures every other Saturday and the correlating returns, making a trip on the motorway on those days a nightmare. In fact, taking a holiday is considered a citizen's right here in France. And yet, the French complain more than Americans do, about everything, and apparently they take more antidepressant drugs. Go figure!

— Laura, France

A Lot of Time Spent Whining

I have worked in offices in both France and the U.S. I’m American, and I have been a teacher in both countries. The Europeans have much longer school days than we do and shorter workdays. There might be something there -- they spend more time learning and then less time efficiently applying that knowledge. We seem to spend more time in the workplace, but a lot of it is spent complaining to colleagues about how little time we have to do anything else than work.